Chapter Three
Marla
I could have killed him.
My heart wouldn’t stop racing. I didn’t need him sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong.
I waited until I got around the corner before I wiped at my eyes. Damn him.
The worst of it was. That feeling that had flowed through me when he stepped next to me. My world had fallen away. Justin, the kids in the hall, everything disappeared. There was just Tank.
But he hadn’t seen me. He’d been too focused on scaring Justin away. Didn’t the big idiot know I could take care of myself? Didn’t he trust me?
Sure, Justine was pushing the boundaries. I’d been within a hair’s breadth of shutting him down cold when Tank showed up and ruined everything.
When were they going to learn? I wasn’t some little girl that needed babysitting.
Probably never, I realized. I might have to wait until the four Lakeland boys graduated before I could have any type of life. A sudden, sick feeling grew in my stomach as I thought about Tank graduating and leaving. He’d be gone before I ever got a chance to make him see me. Me, not Jason’s little sister.
I spent the rest of the day trying to calm down. It would have been easier if I didn’t run into Tank every other minute. The big idiot just seemed to keep popping up wherever I went.
It was like when you hear a new word for the first time. You hear it a dozen times over the next few days and wonder if it had always been there and you were just too much of an idiot to notice.
First in the hall that morning. Then, when I came out of Algebra, there he was, dominating the hallway, walking to his next class. It was impossible not to see him.
Those wide shoulders. A head taller than everyone else. That confident, smooth walk. He just dominated.
I quickly ducked back into the room. Mary Jacobs squealed as I stepped on her foot.
“Sorry,” I mumbled as I kept my focus on Tank. The last thing I wanted was another confrontation.
Then, during lunch, there he was again, center seat of their table. The same table the four Lakeland boys had commandeered four years earlier, their first day of high school.
It had been the out of the way, unpopular table then, I had been told. Now, of course, it was the center of the social scene. And there, in the middle, Tank, looking off into the distance. His strong, handsome face lost in thought.
I wondered what he was thinking about and secretly wished it was me. Of course, it wasn’t. Nope, never going to happen, I reminded myself as my insides turned over with a sense of loss.
Sighing, I grabbed my stuff and got out of there. No way was I spending my lunch hour pining over Tank Gunderson and what wasn’t going to happen.
I was able to make it through fourth and fifth period without running into him. But the anger deep inside of me wouldn’t go away.
I might have made it through sixth, but I ran into Jason outside his locker. All of the emotion I had been bottling up all day seemed to explode out of me. A sort of scary moment when I knew I was losing it and didn’t really care.
“You tell your friend to stay out of my life,” I yelled as I pushed my brother in the chest.
Jason, being the calm, cool, God that he was, simply quirked a corner of his lip and shook his head slowly.
“What are you talking about?” he asked with the innocence of a newborn baby goat.
“Tank! You tell him to stay out of my life. Do you hear me?”
Amber, who had approached from behind asked, “What happened?”
At least she got it.
“I was talking to Justin Weber and Tank steps in and scared him away. Just like you guys do all the time. It has to stop.”
Jason scoffed and started to turn away.
That obviously pushed me over the edge, “I mean it,” I said as I grabbed his arm. I could tell we were gathering an audience. There would be nothing better than to see the Turner kids have a shouting match in the middle of the hall. We’d be the story for the rest of the day.
Jason turned back to me as his eyes narrowed.
“Listen, Marla, cut him some slack. Okay?”
I couldn’t believe it. My brother was sticking up for him.
“Him? Him? Why?”
Jason sighed heavily, then glanced over at Amber. Suddenly, things inside of me shifted a little. This was no longer a silly argument. The look on Jason’s face was too serious.
“Marla,” he said, “just go easy on him. Okay, his mom ... well, things aren’t going too good. I bet he spent the morning cleaning up after her. Plus, I think his father is getting out soon. Which means he’s got to deal with those issues all over again. And to top it off, his best friend’s little sister is yelling about him in front of half the school.
“From what you said,” he continued with that big brother look of his that always pissed me off, “all he did was try and help you out with Justin Weber, who is a jerk anyway. So, quit freaking out. Grow up a little and realize the universe does not revolve around you.”
His words stung as he looked down at me with judgmental eyes. It wasn’t the part about the universe revolving around me. Heck, I was a middle child. I learned real early that wasn’t the case.
No, it was the part about what was going on in Tank’s life. I hadn’t thought. I hadn’t even taken the time to wonder about him. What kind of person did that make me?
Jason was right, all Tank had done was come to my aid. Just like he always did. Only this time, instead of saying thank you, I cut him down and walked away. He must hate me. I mean really despise everything about me.
My raging anger was instantly replaced by a heavy guilt. It was a fact that I could no longer deny. I couldn’t do anything right.
Amber patted me on the shoulder as she rushed to catch up with Jason. The look in her eyes let me know she felt my pain but there really wasn’t much she could do about it.
There wasn’t anything anyone could do about the real problem. To Tank, I was the little sister. I would always be the little sister, never seen and always forgotten. What is more, now I was the shrew little sister. The Bat-crap crazy girl. Just the type of girls that guys like Tank never fell for.
My world had just taken on a new depth of despair. Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse. I opened my big mouth and made sure they did.
.o0o.
Tank
I decided to walk home that afternoon. I needed time to get my mind around what was going on in my life. Besides. I wasn’t really in a rush to get home and deal with my mom.
Jason just shrugged his shoulders when I told him.
As I walked, my mind wandered over a dozen different issues. Jumping from one to the next like a bead of water on a hot skillet.
First, I started trying to figure out what I had done to piss off Marla. Not one of my smarter moments. I just couldn’t get the sight of her talking to Justin Weber out of my mind. Something had clicked inside of me, and I’d stepped in before I really thought it through.
This was Marla Turner we are talking about. Beautiful, sweet, smarter than anyone I know, and she was wasting her time with a jerk like Justin.
She could do so much better.
I started going over the guys in school. Trying to find someone who was good enough for her. Unfortunately, I came up blank. There wasn’t a single one qualified to be with her. Not one. They were either too dumb, too lame, or just too much of a jerk.
Nope, I had been right, Marla just needed to come to the realization that there wasn’t anyone worthwhile. Maybe next year, I thought. After we had graduated and she had the school to herself. Maybe things would pick up for her then. Although, the thought disturbed me. I don’t know why, but it just didn’t seem right for Marla to be hanging around with guys.
The thought didn’t help my mood as I immediately started thinking about my future. College, Mom, Dad, Maybe the army. Nothing sounded appealing.
One thing I did know was that it couldn’t happen fast enough. Whatever the future held. It had to be better than this crap.
When I stepped into the house, my world fell around my knees.
Just when you think things can’t get worse. They do. That was my new motto in life.
He sat there in the recliner. Like it was a throne or something. Looking at me like I was a useless dog bothering him.
My Dad, home from prison.
His face had a white pallor, his eyes were crinkled at the corners, and his forehead was a lot higher than it used to be. But it was his eyes that pinned me in place. A hard gray that looked like they despised the world.
“Where you been?” he asked like he’d been away on a week-long business trip.
My stomach squeezed, and my heart lurched. Three words. Three simple words and all the pain and misery was back.
Ignoring him, I headed for the kitchen to get a coke.
Mom looked up from where she was chopping celery to smile at me. She wore a pretty print dress. All and any trace of that morning’s embarrassment was gone, hidden behind that shaky smile.
So that was how she was going to play it. As if nothing had happened. The shame, the cheating, the no money, having to take her brother’s charity. None of it had happened. He’d just been away for a while, and now he was back.
My muscles tensed up at the hypocrisy as I opened the refrigerator to grab a bottle.
“I said, where have you been?” he said in that gruff voice that brought back too many memories. He had followed me into the kitchen.
I turned to face him and just stared for a minute. We looked at each other, and I wondered for the thousandth time how I ended up with such an asshole for a father.
He looked back at me with a heavy scowl, neither of us moving. Then, I think at the same time, we realized the new truth. It was one of those earth-shaking moments. The kind that can shift a person’s reality.
I had a good three inches and forty pounds on him.
Barry Gunderson was looking up at me. No longer was he towering over me, threatening me with a simple glare. Things had changed.
I saw him flinch as the realization sank in. Not a big flinch, but it was there.
Slamming the door to the refrigerator, I twisted the top off the coke and took a long drink. Only when I had finished did I turn to mom and say, “I’m going over to Jason’s.”
Nothing more, nothing really could be said.
I saw her shoulders relax. I think she was just happy at the idea of no conflict. If I wasn’t there, then there wouldn’t be any yelling and shouting, and therefore no guilt.
Shaking my head, I brushed past him. I will never forget the way he stepped back to make room. I don’t think he intended to do that, but his body reacted before he could stop himself.
At the front door, I turned and looked back at him, I could feel my lips curl up in a sneer as I said, “Welcome home dad, Nice to see you too.”
He stood there with a blank expression. But behind his eyes. I could tell this wasn’t over. Nope, it wasn’t and it probably never would be.